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STEVENSON'S 
PERFECT VIRTUES 



STEVENSON'S 
PERFECT VIRTUES 

AS EXEMPLIHED BY LEIGH HUNT 



BY 

LUTHER A. BREWER 




PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE 
FRIENDS OF LUTHER ALBERTUS 
AND ELINORE TAYLOR BREWER 
CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA CHRIST- 
MAS NINETEEN TWENTY-TWO 



Copyrighted 1922 by 
Luther A. Brewer 






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©ClAC9252d 



STEVENSON'S 
PERFECT VIRTUES 

Gentleness and cheerfulness are the perfect virtues. 

— Robert Louis Stevenson 

STEVENSON was right. There is not a more 
admirable trait in one's character than that of 
cheerfulness. Combined with that other virtue 
named by Stevenson, gentleness, and what more is 
needed to make a companionable and a beloved man. 

These two attributes were possessed in an emphatic 
way both by Stevenson and by Leigh Hunt. That's 
why some of us are so fond of Hunt. • That's why 
he is growing in esteem as he is becoming better known 
to lovers and students of the literature produced in 
England during the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

For it is certain that Hunt is coming into his own. 
First editions of his writings year by year are advanc- 
ing in price. They are becoming scarce and in some 
instances exceedingly difficult to obtain. Catalogues 
of rare book dealers are listing fewer of his works, and 
when quotations are made they invariably are in 
advance of those of a year or two ago. 

The cultivation of cheerfulness frequently is en- 
joined throughout his writings. He had many visitors 
in his home, attracted there by his personal qualities 



6 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

and by his gentleness of heart. He was fond of 
music, which formed a staple in the entertainment 
and the conversation. 

Barry Cornwall (B. W. Procter), a long time inti- 
mate friend, in his Recollections of Men of Letters^ 
mentions the evenings at Hunt's house : "Hunt never 
gave dinners, but his suppers of cold meat and salad 
were cheerful and pleasant; sometimes the cheerful- 
ness (after a 'wassail bowl') soared into noisy merri- 
ment. I remember one Christmas or New Year's 
evening, when we sat there till two or three o'clock in 
the morning, and when the jokes and stories and imita- 
tions so overcame me that I was nearly falling off my 
chair with laughter. This was mainly owing to the 
comic imitations of Coulson, who was usually so 
grave a maru We used to refer to him as an ency- 
clopedia, so perpetually, indeed, that Hunt always 
spoke of him as 'The Admirable Coulson I' This vis 
comica left him for the most part in later life, when 
he became a distinguished lawyer." 

It was this same Barry Cornwall who introduced 
Hawthorne to Hunt, a charming account of Haw- 
thorne's visit being recorded in Our Old Home. "I 
rejoiced to hear him say," he writes, "that he was 
favored with most confident and cheering anticipations 
in respect to a future life; and there were abundant 
proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining 
spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly 
benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of 
whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shin- 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 7 

ing onward into the dusk — all of which gave a 
reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted 
from him. I wish he could have had one draught of 
prosperity before he died." 

There are many of us ready to give expression to 
the same wish. 

Speaking of Hunt's Autobiography, a book second 
only in interest to Boswell's Johnson said Carlyle, this 
caustic writer had the grace to say that the reader 
might find in that book "the image of a gifted, gentle, 
patient, and valiant human soul, as it buffets its way 
through the billows of time, and will not drown 
though often in danger; cannot be drowned, but 
conquers and leaves a track of radiance behind it." 

The Spectator, London, said this autobiography was 
one of the most graceful and genial chronicles of the 
incidents of a human life in the English language. 
"The sweetness of temper, the indomitable love and 
forgiveness, the pious hilarity, and the faith in the 
ultimate triumph of good revealed in its pages show 
the humane and noble qualities of the writer." 

This appreciation of Hunt is in contrast with the 
portrait drawn by Dickens in Bleak House, where the 
character of Harold Skimpole was so patent a carica- 
ture of Hunt that mutual friends promptly remon- 
strated with the author, and this influenced Dickens, 
in the later numbers of the monthly parts in which the 
book was issued, to modify his picture. 

In writing of his father after his death, Thornton 
evidently had in mind this ungenerous act of Dickens 



8 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

when he penned these sentences: "His consideration, 
his sympathy with what was gay and pleasurable, his 
avowed doctrine of cultivating cheerfulness were man- 
ifest on the surface, and could only be appreciated by 
those who knew him in society, most probably even 
exaggerated as salient traits, on which he himself in- 
sisted with a sort of gay and ostentatious wilfulness. 
In the spirit which made him disposed to enjoy 'any- 
thing that was going forward' he would even assume 
for the evening a convivial aspect, and urge a liberal 
measure of the wine with the gusto of a bon vivant. 
Few who knew him so could be aware, not only of the 
simple and uncostly sources from which he habitually 
drew his enjoyments, but of his singularly plain life, 
extended even to a rule of self denial. Excepting at 
intervals when wine was recommended to him, or came 
to him as a gift of friendship, his customary drink was 
water, which he would drink with the almost daily 
repetition of Dr. Armstrong's line, 'Nought like the 
simple element dilutes.' . . His dress was always 
plain and studiously economical. He would excuse 
the plainness of his diet, by ascribing it to a delicacy of 
health, which he overrated. His food was often noth- 
ing but bread and meat at dinner, bread and tea for 
two meals of the day, bread alone for luncheon or for 
supper. His liberal constructions were shown to 
others, his strictness to himself. If he heard that a 
friend was in trouble, his house was offered as a 
'home'; and it was literally so, many times in his life." 
Apropos of this, it is of interest to note that his 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 9 

house was an asylum for Keats for weeks, at a time 
when the young poet was sick in body and mind. It 
was Leight Hunt who gave Keats, in the Exa?niner^ 
the first favorable review he received. 

It is but fair to note that Dickens later disclaimed 
any intent to portray in Harold Skimpole the foibles 
of Leigh Hunt. I have several letters from Dickens 
to Hunt making delicate reference to the subject. As 
late as June 28, 1855, four years prior to Hunt's death, 
Dickens wrote: "I hope you will not now think it 
necessary to renew that painful subject with me. 
There is nothing to remove from my mind — I hope, 
nothing to remove from yours. I thought of the little 
notice which has given you (I rejoice most heartily to 
find) so much pleasure — as the best means that could 
possibly present themse-lves of enabling me to express 
myself publicly about you as you would desire. In 
that better and unmistakable association with you by 
name, let all end." 

Shortly after the death of Hunt Dickens made it a 
point to say in his All the Year Round that it was the 
graces and charms of manner of Hunt, '"which had 
many a time delighted him, and impressed him as being 
unspeakably whimsical and attractive," that were re- 
called when the character in question was drawn, and 
that he had no thought "that the admired original 
would ever be charged with the imaginary vices of the 
fictitious creature" — an explanation that does not 
clear the great novelist. 

Dickens also bears tribute to Hunt's cheerful- 



10 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

ness despite the reasons he had for sadness. "His 
life was, in several respects, a life of trouble, though 
his cheerfulness was such that he was, upon the whole, 
happier than some men who have had fewer griefs to 
wrestle with." In Hunt's correspondence, Dickens 
saw evidence that he was "sometimes over-clouded 
with the shadow of affliction, but more often bright 
and hopeful, and at all times sympathetic: taking a 
keen delight in all beautiful things — in the exhaust- 
less world of books and art, in the rising genius of 
young authors, in the immortal language of music, in 
trees and flowers, and old memorial nooks of London 
and its suburbs; in the sunlight which came, as he 
used to say, like a visitor out of heaven, glorifying 
humble places." 

"The very philosophy of cheerfulness," says R. H. 
Home, in A New Spirit of the Age, "and the good 
humour of genius imbue all his prose papers from end 
to end." 

Says Thornton, his eldest son: "Leigh Hunt's 
whole teaching of himself as well as others, inculcated 
the promotion of cheerfulness as a duty, not for the 
selfish gain of the one man himself, but for the sake 
of making the happier atmosphere for others and 
rendering the more perfect homage to the Author of 
all good and happiness." 

Here is another picture of the cheerful situation, 
taken from "Our Cottage," which appeared in The 
New Monthly Magazine for September, 1836: 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 11 

Autumn, the princely season, purple-robed 
And liberal-handed, brings no gloom to us, 
But, rich in its own self, gives us rich hope 
Of winter-time; and when the winter comes. 
We burn old wood, and read old books that wall 
Our biggest-room. 

"We burn old wood, and read old books" — there's 
the kindly cheerfulness that is appealing. Isn't that 
a picture to drive hence any thought of sadness"? 

His son, Thornton, felicitously said that all his life 
he was striving to open more widely the door of the 
library, and the windows that look out upon nature. 
He loved the green fields of suburban London, and 
never was more happy than when sauntering along the 
leafy lanes. With books for companions and nature 
for inspiration, how can any mortal be other than 
cheerful. 

All the literary men of his time delighted in his 
society. All were his friends. Many a mention is 
made of the happy and cheerful gatherings at his 
home. Hazlitt speaks of "the vinous quality of his 
mind" as producing a fascination and an intoxication 
at once upon those who came in contact with him. 

Professor Dowden, on the other hand, says it was 
not a heavy wine, but a bright, light wine that coursed 
through his veins — 

Tasting of Flora and the country green, 
Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth. 

It is natural for one acquainted with the writings 



« 



12 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

of Leigh Hunt to associate him with cheerfulness, for 
kindness and cheerfulness are to be found in every- 
thing he wrote. Even in his letters in which he tells 
of some of his perplexities there is found the optimistic 
note. 

Which recalls what Hunt wrote of associations with 
Shakespeare. It is quite natural to associate the idea 
of Shakespeare with anything which is worth mention. 
"Shakespeare and Christmas" are two ideas that fall 
as happily together as "wine and walnuts." "Shake- 
speare and May," and "Shakespeare and June" call 
up many essays about spring and violets. One may 
say "Shakespeare and Love," and put himself at once 
in the midst of a bevy of bright damsels, as sweet as 
rosebuds. "Shakespeare and Life" puts before one 
the whole world of youth, and spirit, and life itself. 

"Hunt and Cheerfulness" are inseparable in the 
mind of one who knows the story of his life and its 
struggles. 

There's the cheerful note in this rondeau which 
appeared in The New Monthly Magazine, 1838: 

Jenny kiss'd me when we met, 

Jumping from the chair she sat in ; 
Time, you thief! who love to get 

Sweets into your list, put that in: 
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad; 

Say that health and wealth have missed me ; 
Say I'm growing old, but add — 
Jennie kiss'd me! 

The Jennie here immortalized is said to have been 
Jane Welsh Carlyle. 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 13 

Perhaps Hunt's most quoted poem is his "Abou 
Ben Adhem," in which he asks the angel to "write me 
as one that loves his fellow-men." This is typical 
of his life's attitude to mankind. He had a kindly 
feeling for all. The line was placed on his tombstone 
in Kensal Green Cemetery by those who knew him 
best, his friends feeling that it most fittingly indicated 
the kindliness of his character. 

This poem rightly is considered the most meritorious 
of all Hunt wrote, and it is quoted here because we 
love it: 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw, within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold: — 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold. 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
"What writest thou?" — The vision rais'd its head, 
And with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord." 
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," 
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low. 
But cheerly still ; and said, "I pray thee then. 
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

The angel wrote, and vanish'd. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light, 

And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, 

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 

The cheerful note is sounded in many of his poems : 

May, thou month of rosy beauty. 
Month, when pleasure is a duty. 



14 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 



May's the blooming hawthorn bough; 
May's the month that's laughing now. 
I no sooner write the word, 
Than it seems as though it heard, 
And looks up and laughs at me. 
Like a sweet face rosily — 

If the rains prolong unduly the winter, he can love 
May in books; for 

There is May in books for ever ; 
May will part from Spenser never; 
May's in Milton, May's in Prior ; 
May's in Chaucer, Thompson, Dyer; 
May's in all the Italian books; 
She has old and modern nooks. 
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves 
In happy places they call shelves, 
And will rise, and dress your rooms 
With a drapery thick with blooms. 

Come, ye rains then, if ye will. 
May's at home, and with me still; 
But come rather, thou, good weather. 
And find us in the fields together. 

This certainly is redolent of cheer. But he also 
longs for "manly, joyous, gipsy June." 

O, could I walk round the earth 
With a heart to share my mirth. 
With a look to love me ever. 
Thoughtful much, but sullen never, 
I could be content to see 
June and no variety; 
Loitering here, and living there. 
With a book, and frugal fare, 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 15 

With a finer gipsy time, 
And a cuckoo in the clime, 
Work at morn, and mirth at noon. 
And sleep beneath the sacred moon. 

In one of the items in his pleasant book, Table-Talk^ 
Hunt speaks for greater cheerfulness in English liter- 
ature. He cites Suckling's famous A Ballad Upon a 
Wedding^ in which allusion is made to the once pop- 
ular belief that the sun danced on Easter-day: 

Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out, 

As if they f ear'd the light ; 
But, Oh ! She dances such a way. 
No sun upon an Easter-day 

Is half so fine a sight. 

And then he remarks that it is a pity that we do not 
have, if not more such beliefs, yet more such poetry, to 
stand us instead of them. "Our poetry," he writes, 
"like ourselves, has too little animal spirits. It has 
plenty of thought and imagination; plenty of night- 
thoughts, and day-thoughts too; and in its dramatic 
circle, a world of action and character. It is a poetry 
of the highest order and the greatest abundance. But 
though not sombre — though manly, hearty, and even 
luxuriant — it is certainly not a very joyous poetry. 
And the same may be said of our literature in general. 
You do not conceive the writers to have been cheerful 
men. They often recommend cheerfulness, but rather 
as a good and sensible practice than as something 
which they feel themselves." A little later he says, 



16 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

'T am only speaking of the rarity of a certain kind of 
sunshine in our literature, and expressing a natural 
rainy-day wish that we had a little more of it." He 
thinks there should be a joyous set of elegant extracts 
in a score of volumes, "that we could have at hand, 
like a cellaret of good wine, against April or November 
weather !" 

Hunt believed in a "cheerful religion." "We are 
for making the most of the present world," he wrote. 
He had not any gloomy forebodings as to the things 
that may come after death. His hondoji Journal^ as 
Frank Carr so well states, "breathed such uniform 
gladness and hopefulness that every page is pervaded 
with an odor of homely sanctity, as of hidden violets." 

And again: He "noticed the flowers when their 
timorous splendours peeped through the snow at the 
first impulse of life in the dark earth, and when, after- 
wards, as a mantle they spread their glory over garden 
and field ; greeted the birds, from the lark's early carol, 
and the arrival of the swallows, until the woods be- 
came vocal with multitudinous voices." 

As to Hunt's religion, by the way, there has been 
much discussion. I have Leigh Hunt's copy of a 
volume bearing this long title : Tlie Mystical Initia- 
tions; or. Hymns of Orpheus, translated from the 
original Greek: with a preliminary dissertation on the 
Life and Theology of Orpheus" containing this obser- 
vation in Hunt's hand-writing : 

Mr. Taylor's faith sometimes makes him eloquent ; but if he 
had united, with his Platonical abstractions, the true Christian 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 17 

power of socially working at all times, he need not have feared 
whatever seemed coming. Platonism and Christianity, if 
either be thoroughly understood, are formed admirably to go 
together. The first shapes the human being to beauty and 
imagination, the latter to love and immortality. The first 
perfects him individually, the latter to endless companionship. 
Platonism lifts the philosopher towards heaven: Christianity 
takes up the whole human race, and puts them there. 

I should like to be a worshiper in a Christian temple, in 
which whatsoever is good and beautiful should be held, for 
those reasons, to be divinely true; in which Plato's unma- 
lignant evil should be the ground for Christ's all-benevolent 
good to stand upon; and in which no more limits should be 
assigned to whatever was sincere, loving, and imaginative, 
than to that boundless and beautiful sky, which is surely large 
enough to hold it. 

In these days when so many feel forebodings of 
trouble it is pleasant to recall that two such men as 
Robert Louis Stevenson and Leigh Hunt, each of 
whom had reason for gloomy thoughts, persisted in 
looking upon the bright things of life. Not any- 
where in the writings of these two men will one find 
them dwelling on their miseries. Per contra, both 
preached cheerfulness. In darkest hours they saw the 
sunshine and the flowers. Like our own Lincoln, they 
plucked the thistle and planted the flower where they 
thought the flower would grow. The reading of these 
two authors is recommended — as is also a better and 
more intimate acquaintance with Charles Lamb. Here 
is a triumvirate that will drive into outer darkness 
all fits of the blues. God will be shown to be in his 
heaven, and all will be well with the world. 



18 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

"Hunt," says Shelley, "was one of those happy 
souls which are the salt of the earth, and without 
whom this earth would smell like what it is — a tomb; 
who is what others seem." 

Hunt viewed his many misfortunes in a kindly 
spirit, showing us often what fine things may come 
to us out of human suffering. It is a benediction, a 
peace-compelling exercise to spend an evening with 
Hunt. His optimism is catching. One cannot get 
away from it. He writes of Samuel Johnson: 
"How much good and entertainment did not the very 
necessities of such a man help to produce us." This 
is a saying we may apply to Hunt himself. 

Leigh Hunt's London Journal^ one of his best pub- 
lications, states that its object is "Pleasure . . . 
the pleasure recommended alike by the most doubting 
experiment, and the most trusting faith — that of 
making the utmost of this green and golden world, 
the smallest particles of whose surface we have not yet 
learned to turn to account — that of profiting alike 
from the toil that is incumbent on us, and from 'the 
lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they 
spin.' . . We say nothing we do not think, and 
manifest no feelings which are not those of our daily 
life and our most habitual enjoyments, our talisman 
against trouble, and our best reward for exertion — a 
leaf, a flower, a fine passage of music, or poetry, or 
painting, a belief in a thousand capabilities of earth 
and man, give us literally as much delight as we say 
they do. We should not otherwise have been able to 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 19 

get through 'a sea of troubles,' not to recommend as 
we do the loving light that has saved us." 

Hunt's motto for his Indicator, a publication 
praised by Charles Lamb, is a cheerful one: "A dram 
of sweet is worth a pound of sour." It was taken 
from Spenser, one of Hunt's favorites, and was sug- 
gested by Mrs. Novello, mother of Mary Cowden 
Clarke, as we are told in Letters to an Enthusiast'. 
"By the way, did you know that my mother was the 
godmother of the 'Indicator?' She suggested its 
name, and Leigh Hunt adopted it, and the passage as 
a motto which she had pointed out as offering ground 
for a good title." 

Hunt could get cheerfulness out of a pebble even. 
"Strike it," he says, "and you will get something out 
of him : warm his heart, and out come the genial sparks 
that shall gladden your hearth, and put hot dishes on 
your table." The brook singeth, states Coleridge in 
that beautiful stanza : 

A voice of a hidden brook 

In the leafy month of June, 
That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 

And Hunt observes it would not sing so well with- 
out the stone. 

Then in his light, airy way he calls our attention to 
that exquisite little poem by Wordsworth on the fair 
maiden who died by the river Dove : 

A violet by a mossy stone 
Half hidden from the eye ; 



20 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

Fair as the star, when only one 
Is shining in the sky. 

And he asks if anything can express a lovelier lone- 
liness, than the violet half hidden by the mossy stone. 

Hunt finds other gentle qualities in a stone, citing 
the opening lines of Keats's Hyperion, where he de- 
scribes the dethroned monarch of the gods, sitting in 
his exile: 

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
Far from the fiery noon, and Eve's one star, 
Sate gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone. 

Nothing certainly can be more quiet than a stone. 
It utters not a syllable nor a sigh. 

Shakespeare had the knack of seeing power in 
things gentle : 

Weariness 
Can snore upon the flint, when restive sloth 
Finds the down pillow hard. 

'Tf you are melancholy for the first time, you will 
find upon a little inquiry that others have been melan- 
choly many times, and yet are cheerful now," Hunt 
writes in the Indicator. "If you are melancholy many 
times, recollect that you have got over all those times." 

This is good advice, and true. Exercise is recom- 
mended as a promoter of cheerfulness. Such a high 
opinion of the value of exercise was held by Plato that 
he maintained it was a cure even for a wounded con- 
science. In the same article Hunt suggests that one 
should not want money for money's sake. Certes, 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 21 

Hunt never craved money for the purpose of hoarding 
it. Nearly all his life he needed money acutely, but 
when a generous sum came into his possession he did 
not know how to keep it ; nay, he did not know how to 
use it properly. He was always "hard up," simply 
because he was a child in money matters. Withal, 
he was optimistic and cheerful, even to the extent of 
remaining at home because he did not possess the 
means of purchasing presentable clothing. When his 
wife wrote him that after paying for a loaf of bread 
she would not have a penny in her pocket, Hunt writes 
her in a cheerful way. Some of us with a less keen 
perception of cheerful situations, or v/ith less ability 
to surmount calamities would find it rather difficult 
to be as chereful as Hunt seemed to be. 

Hunt's correspondence, both published and unpub- 
lished, bears testimony to his cheerfulness even when 
the clouds were the darkest. Speaking of the two 
volumes of Correspondence edited in 1862 by his son 
Thornton, Edmund Oilier, the publisher, thus bears 
tribute to the man and his buoyancy of spirit even 
under very trying circumstances. In these volumes, 
he says, "we see him as those who knew him familiarly 
saw him in his everyday life. Sometimes overclouded 
with the shadow of affliction, but more often bright 
and hopeful, and at all times taking a keen delight in 
beautiful things; in the exhaustless world of books 
and art ; in the rising genius of young authors ; in the 
immortal language of music; in trees, and flowers, 
and old memorial nooks of London and its suburbs; in 
the sunlight which came, as he used to say, like a visi- 



22 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

tor out of heaven, glorifying humble places; in the 
genial intercourse of mind with mind. . . A heart 
and soul so gifted could not but share largely in the 
happiness with which the Divine Ruler of the Uni- 
verse has compensated our sorrows; and he had loving 
hearts about him to the last, to sweeten all." 

Hunt's gentleness and cheerfulness are shown in his 
essays, as well as in his poetry. Perhaps none of his 
essays evidences these qualities of his heart and mind 
more forcibly than "A Day by the Fire," which was 
written for the Reflector in 1812, when he was twenty- 
eight years of age. 'T am one of those that delight in a 
fireside," he begins, at once thereby telling us that he 
loves kindliness and cheerfulness. For no man who 
loves a fire on the hearth, especially a fire made of old 
wood, can be a sour old curmudgeon. It is as impos- 
sible as it is for one not to love a sweet little girl. 

Hunt would have his fire left quite to itself, with- 
out a tea-kettle, "bubbling and loud-hissing," which 
"throws up a steamy column," as Cowper tells it. 
Such a fire "has full room to breathe and to blaze," 
and he can poke it as he pleases. "Poke it as I please I" 
he continues. "Think, benevolent reader, think of 
the pride and pleasure of having in your hand that 
awful, but at the same time artless, weapon, a poker; 
of putting it into the proper bar, gently levering up 
the coals, and seeing the instant and bustling flame 
above !" 

The use of the poker with one's fire is as natural as 
shaking hands with a friend. And 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 23 

Then shine the bars, the cakes in smoke aspire 

A sudden glory bursts from all the fire, 

The conscious wight rejoicing in the heat, 

Rubs the blithe knees and toasts th' alternate feet. 

Writing in The Companion in 1828, he remarks: 

A man . . . may begin with being happy, on the mere 
strength of the purity and vivacity of his pulse: children do 
so; but he must have derived his constitution from very vir- 
tuous, temperate, and happy parents indeed, and be a great 
fool to boot, and wanting in the commonist sympathies of his 
nature, if he can continue happy, and yet be a bad man : and 
then he could not be bad, in the worst sense of the word, for 
his defect would excuse him. 

Hunt quotes approvingly this from Hannah More : 

Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease. 
And though but few can serve, yet all may please, 
O let th' ungentle spirit learn from hence, 
A small unkindness is a great offence. 

"Life," says George Moore, "is a perfect gift, and 
our duty is to enjoy it; by doing so we can help others 
to enjoy." 

This was Hunt's philosophy. 

These quotations from his letters, taken from orig- 
inals in our collection, are indicative of his view of 
life: 

Do not be alarmed about the emptiness of your purse on 
Monday. In the course of the day you will receive some 
money at all events — enough to go on with. . . Mean- 
time I send you two sixpence (mighty sum!) which I have in 
the last corner of my pocket. You will not despise them, 



24 STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 

coming with his heart's love, and his best thanks for your 
cheerful letters. — Oct. 4, 1829, to Mrs. Hunt at Epsom. 

Heaven seems to afford us consolatory thought, and show to 
us almost certain glimpses of happiness, in proportion as we 
do its work with cheerfulness : — and what work is more prop- 
erly the work of heaven than that of helping one another to 
bear our burdens and strengthen our patience *? — Letter, Flor- 
ence, 4 Nov., 1824, to Bebs, his wife's sister. 

He writes Mrs. Hunt, his "Dearest Molly mine," 
thus cheerfully: 

I have got the twenty guineas, and settled with Hyatt; but 
I felt so new, with my waistcoat pocket full of sovereigns, and 
it seemed such a charge, that I thought I had better bring it 
up to you myself. 

I am again, with bitter heart, forced to disappoint you; but 
Mr. Bell says, that "certainly, certainly" (emphatically repeat- 
ing it) I shall have the six sovereigns tomorrow morning. . . 
Keep up your spirits. 

I forgot to mention . . . that I have still one of the 
sovereigns which I brought away with me, as well as five 
shillings and sixpence in silver; so that I hope I shall have 
enough, if not quite enough, to pay for the fly on Sunday. 
If not, perhaps you can borrow a few shillings till the Treas- 
ury pay-day. 

I shall cut short my sighs as I am wont to do. 

I shall regard the whole period as the beginning of that true 
sunset of life, of which I have so often spoken; for if clouds 
are still about it, they only serve to enrich what the light of 
love (the only heavenly light) makes beautiful. 

My friends who know me most intimately say 



STEVENSON'S PERFECT VIRTUES 25 

there are two things in my life that may not be quite 
normal — my fondness for work, and my liking for 
Leigh Hunt. I do not have any apologies to make for 
either of these characteristics. My admiration for 
Hunt and my consequent desire to acquire Hunt in- 
cunabula could not be brought to fruition if I did not 
work and earn. The first characteristic noted there- 
fore is the sequence of the second. 

I have not seen fit to apologize for either of these 
traits — the one a luxury perhaps, the other a neces- 
sity. 

Leigh Hunt as a man and as a writer is worth know- 
ing. He not only loved books, but he made books for 
others to love. His life at times was almost a tragedy. 
There were occasions when he did not have the cour- 
age to leave his house, so lacking was he in possessing 
enough clothes to make a decent appearance. At an- 
other time he did not have the price of a loaf of bread, 
and so went hungry. But he never lost his courage, 
and ever was hopeful and sweet tempered. 

Shelley quotes a line seen by him on a sun-dial in 
Italy: "Colto soltanto le ore serene" — I mark only 
the bright hours. Hunt and Stevenson saw in their 
lives from day to day only the bright hours. 

And this is the message that The Brewers would 
send this Christmas time to their friends: "Gentle- 
ness and cheerfulness are the perfect virtues." Only 
the bright hours are the ones we should see. 



OF THIS BOOK TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY 
COPIES WERE PRINTED IN DECEMBER 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO 
BY THE TORCH PRESS CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 492 973 1 t 



